What the Cook et al. paper did was examine 11,944 abstracts from papers that were published from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “global climate change” or “global warming” in their abstract. What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

They also contacted 8,547 authors to ask if they could rate their own papers and got 1,200 responses, which meant that 2,142 papers were also rated by their authors on their endorsement level. The results for this again found that 97% of the selected papers stated that humans are causing global warming. This was done to determine that there wasn’t any sort of inherent problem in the rating system used and this seems to indicate that.

In both cases, the self rated papers and the abstract ratings, papers were counted as endorsing that humans are causing global warming if they fell in the first three categories of the following seven that were used:

“Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of global warming”

“Explicit endorsement without quantification”

“Implicit endorsement”

“No opinion or uncertain”

“Implicit rejection”

“Explicit rejection without quantification”

“Explicit rejection with quantification”

And here’s where the problem starts with what Monckton wrote on Watts Up With That:

There were 43 abstracts explicitly endorsing the IPCC’s version of consensus. But there were 54 in level 5; 15 in level 6; and 9 in level 7. Total sample size was thus a not exactly significant 121 out of 11,944 papers, or just 1% of what was already a smallish sample of the entire literature. So the consensus, on their own dopey basis, is not the 97% they originally published, nor even the 87% they now claim, but a mere 35.5%.

Now this is bit hard to follow as a lot of numbers are mentioned and he jumps around a bit with the points he makes. But what Monckton is saying here is that if you only count the papers from categories one and two (rejecting the largest endorsement category 3), then compare that to the number of papers that reject the consensus (category 5 to 7), you only get a consensus of 35.5% compared to his total of 121 papers. Which is only 1% endorsement if you compare it against all papers, which includes papers that don’t state a position. But those are not the numbers the paper states in its results.

Monckton is also the co-author of a paper that claims that the Cook et al. paper found a consensus of 0.3% based on comparing the papers that “actually” endorse that humans are the primary cause of global warming against the total amount of papers.

All these comparisons made by Monckton to lower the scientific consensus percentage are meaningless. You can’t compare papers that state no position on global warming with those that do. It’s nonsensical as the papers that don’t state a position often are researching an entirely different question/subject in climatology.

Take for example a literature search on HIV to answer the question if HIV causes AIDS. When you do this you won’t only get papers that talk about this link, the majority will talk about something entirely different. For example how HIV is being tested as a possible carrier of genetic material in gene therapy (don’t worry, it doesn’t contain the RNA of HIV so it can’t cause AIDS). A very interesting topic and very promising for helping people with genetic disorders, but it doesn’t tell you if HIV causes AIDS. This simple analogy shows how asinine the reasoning is that Monckton uses.

But the biggest flaw is that you can use this very same reasoning against Monckton. If you take for example the papers that explicitly reject that humans are causing global warming based on the abstract rating you get the number of 0.08%. That’s based on 9 papers explicitly rejecting that humans are causing global warming. Against 41 abstract that explicitly state that humans are causing it.

Which brings me to the real reason I’m again talking about the Cook et al. paper. What motivated me was the language Monckton uses throughout his blog post:

Cook et al., paid schoolboy interns in propaganda studies at Queensland Kindergarten, are not pleased with Legates et al. (2013), written by grown-ups, which demonstrated that the kids,surveying the abstracts of 11,944 papers on global climate change published from 1991-2012, had marked only 64 abstracts out of 11,944 as explicitly endorsing the IPCC’s version of consensus.

And he says for example the following about other papers that measure the scientific consensus:

You’re going to like this: for the tiny tots’ desperation is hilariously self-evident. Their please-sir-me-too paper says it found exactly the same “97%” “consensus” as two earlier laughable and long-discredited head-count surveys, Doorstop & Zimmerframe (2009) and Scrambledegg et al. (2010).

Changing the names of scientists to call them “Doorstop” (Doran), Zimmerframe (Zimmerman), and Scrambledegg (Anderegg) is extremely childish. He calls everyone that worked on the Cook et al. paper “zit-faces”, “tiddlers”, “teenies”, and “tiny tots”, basically calling them children at every opportunity. While being as snarky and belittling as possible towards them. The whole post written by Monckton is chock-full of these kinds of personal attacks and he hurls insult after insult towards those that he’s critical about.

The reason this annoys me so is because he said the following during a debate held on the 19th of July in 2011 at the National Press Club of Australia:

First of all, ladies and gentlemen of the press, I hope that you would regard us as conducting a civilised debate here and I should certainly like, at this point, to pay tribute to my opponent in this debate, who has conducted himself in an entirely civilised fashion and I’m going to try to do the same. So can we give him a round of applause.

[Applause]

Now I am concerned that three weeks before I arrived in Australia, one of your journalists said that climate sceptics should be branded with tattoos. I am concerned that two weeks before I came to Australia, one of your journalists, on a leading national newspaper, in that national newspaper, said that climate sceptics should be gassed. Now I wonder what kind of a regime it was that used to do that to its opponents?

And what I’m particularly concerned about, ladies and gentlemen of the press, is that you have quite rightly called me out for a single, inadvertent, crass remark for which I have completely and abjectly and humbly and unreservedly apologised – and I renew that apology now – and yet you have not asked your own number, who have done similar things – in fact worse things – to apologise.

And Andrew, you say you work for the West Australian. Was this the paper whose headline, a couple of weeks ago, was Ban the Lord, with a large picture of me?

[Laughter]

Was that a civilised tone? I’m not sure that it was.

So let us all agree that in future this debate should be conducted at a more scientific level.

After saying that about being civil towards each other and that the public debate should focus “at a more scientific level” he then has the audacity to ignores all that and goes after opponents personally. This is exactly the reason why I said that he isn’t the person that should lecture anyone on civility in public discourse. Especially considering how nasty he sometimes is, and he can be far more insensitive and nasty than he was in the article on Watts Up With That.

I already was of the opinion that you can basically dismiss anything Monckton says because almost every single time he says something about climatology he’s wrong. A position I reached after examining the claims he made during a debate that was held at the National Press Club of Australia.

Now I can’t take him serious any more on anything outside of climatology. Simply because he can’t stay civil when he says he will, yet he demands it from others.

Update 2014-04-12 @ 8:21
Corrected a mistake in the figures Monckton used in his WUWT blog post and edited it for clarity.

17 reader comments

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Monckton’s post is a remarkably childish post. It’s also an amazingly poor analysis (although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised). Essentially redefines (or very narrowly defines) what the IPCC position is and then claims that only (as you mention) 0.3% of the abstract endorse that position. Just incredible and actually quite hard to rebut as it makes so little sense that I find it hard to know where to begin.

Indeed it is quite childish. Especially considering he takes offence when done so towards him…

And it’s indeed hard to rebut his points with how jumps around with the numbers he uses. Just checking that I’m not misquoting numbers and understanding where he was getting them from cost me half an hour…

On top of that you also have to sift through his insults and try to figure out what his point is.

It’s truly one of the worst written articles I’ve seen from him. As most of the time you can easily follow what he’s on about, despite him almost always mangling the scientific subjects he talks about. But this time it’s a mess.

Now this is bit hard to follow as a lot of numbers are mentioned and he jumps around a bit with the points he makes. But what Monckton is saying here is that if you count the papers from categories one to three, and then compare that to the number of papers that reject the consensus (category 5 to 7), you only get a consensus of 35.5%. Which is only 1% endorsement if you compare it against the total amount of papers.

Looking at the text you quote, to arrive at the 35.5% he is adding up 1-2 and 5-7. Both 3 (the implicit endorsement) and 4 (no position or uncertain) are being omitted. 5, which he is including, is implicit rejection.

According to him, 1-2 has a total of 43:

There were 43 abstracts explicitly endorsing the IPCC’s version of consensus.

Then looking at the rejection, he states:

But there were 54 in level 5; 15 in level 6; and 9 in level 7.

Against, by his count, is 78. The total he considers is therefore 43+78=121. Therefore, as he calculates it, excluding the implicit endorsement but including the implicit rejection, the percentage is 35.5%

In any case, the reason why I bring this up is that there was a recent Guardian article by Dana here on the Cook article:

… and in the discussion below some skeptic brought it up, so I started searching for references to it. Everything was websites. It doesn’t even register on Google Scholar. But I also found your blog and a copy of the paper from one of the skeptic sites. Just one. I believe the paper largely exists so that they have a title to refer to.

I might try reaching out a little later. But if you want to reach me for whatever reason, my email is [redacted].

I think that it is very clear that even 65 papers out of 3,145 that take a position is not a 97% endorsement of the IPCC position. Monckton is childish but after years of dealing with people who keep distorting numbers to sell a narrative that has no empirical support it can get tiring to keep writing as a serious adult.

The simple fact is that the Cook paper fails the smell test upon review. The fact that Monckton did not use nice language does not change that reality.

As noted above, when we perform this calculation, the consensus position that humans are the main cause of global warming is endorsed in 87% of abstracts and 96% of full papers.

Note the consensus percentage based on the author ratings of the paper. The argument you made can also be turned against you, as just 9 papers explicitly rejected that humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming.

It also ignores a point raised in the Cook et al. paper that when something is considered confirmed the science moves on:

Of note is the large proportion of abstracts that state no position on AGW. This result is expected in consensus situations where scientists ‘…generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees’ (Oreskes 2007, p 72). This explanation is also consistent with a description of consensus as a ‘spiral trajectory’ in which ‘initially intense contestation generates rapid settlement and induces a spiral of new questions’ (Shwed and Bearman 2010); the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community and the remaining debate in the field has moved to other topics. This is supported by the fact that more than half of the self-rated endorsement papers did not express a position on AGW in their abstracts.

Also, Monckton not being civil but asking for others to be civil towards him is hypocritical. If you want to be taken seriously and want people to be civil towards you it means that you stay civil yourself. Showing frustration and exasperation is of course fine, but changing the names of scientists to call them “Doorstop”, Zimmerframe, and Scrambledegg and calling names is extremely childish. That just undermines your message for civility.

I strongly suggest you do not base your arguments on anything from Monckton, as he does what you accused others of doing (distorting numbers). In general Monckton is almost always wrong with what he says or claims. It also means that your claim of what reality is doesn’t actually match reality. The ratings from the authors confirmed the results found via the abstract ratings and shows a stronger consensus.

Involved in the study were 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 written by 29,083 authors, published in 1980 journals which matched the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. It was found that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming.

8547 out of 29,083 authors (29%) were emailed an invitation to rate their own papers 1200 responses (14% response rate) were received. 2,142 papers (18% of 11,944) received self-ratings from 1189 authors (4% of 29,083). Among the self-rated papers that stated a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. Among self-rated papers not expressing a position on AGW in the abstract, 53.8% were self-rated as endorsing the consensus. Among respondents who authored a paper expressing a view on AGW, 96.4% endorsed the consensus.

———–

From my take on that, even after being specifically asked, over 30% ((100% – 53.8%) x 66.4%) of the authors still refused to endorse “the consensus.”

Anyway, the “consensus” referred to in the study is stated in it to be, merely, “that humans are causing global warming.” Since CO2 is a proven greenhouse gas and human activity is generating CO2, very would few dispute that. From what I’ve read, even the vast majority of skeptics don’t. The disagreement is over exactly HOW MUCH warming is being caused and will be caused in the future by human activity.

Undoubtedly, the public PERCEPTION is that 97% of climate scientists endorse the CATASTROPHIC warming view, the one most covered in the popular press.

The figures I want to know are the most important ones for setting policy, but I don’t see how to obtain them from Cook’s 2013 paper:

1. What percent of climate scientists believe that AGW will certainly or almost certainly result in CATASTROPHIC warming.

2. What percent of climate scientists believe that AGW will not result in catastrophic warming.

3. What percent of climate scientists are uncertain whether AGW will result in catastrophic warming.

There’s a lot of throwing around of numbers from several parts of the paper, and some are talking about very different things. They often don’t say what you think that they say.

Lets start with the claim that “authors still refused to endorse ‘the consensus'”, which is an interesting choice of words. Not all authors that were contacted didn’t respond, what the particular reason for that was isn’t known. Though the response rate that this paper got from the authors was quite high (14% response rate).

But here’s where you make the big mistake, the 30% that you say “refused” to endorse the consensus includes papers that do not state a position on this matter. This is the same mistake Monckton made, you cannot use those papers to cast doubt on the found consensus. I explain this very clearly in the above article.

You’re also spreading the false information that sceptics would be included in the 97% consensus. What you said can be captured in one of the following categories:

(5) Implicit rejection

Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming

‘…anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th century could plausibly result from natural causes according to these results’

(6) Explicit rejection without quantification

Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming

‘…the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect’

(7) Explicit rejection with quantification

Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming

‘The human contribution to the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission’

These are the categories used in the paper you claim to have read. You can find this table (Table 2) in section ‘2. Methodology’.

You’re also attacking a paper on a point that it doesn’t make or researched. It simply asked if we’re the cause of the current warming, the literature wasn’t surveyed on the consequences of global warming. Although it’s not hard to find information that tells you what the consequences will be (they won’t be good).

Please point out where that table is tied to figures by percent of respondents. I must have missed it. Most important to setting _POLICY_ are the answers to the following questions. What are the answers to them?:

1. What percent of climate scientists believe that AGW will certainly or almost certainly result in CATASTROPHIC warming.
2. What percent of climate scientists believe that AGW will not result in catastrophic warming.
3. What percent of climate scientists are uncertain whether AGW will result in catastrophic warming.

The data the paper used is, both for the abstract ratings and self-ratings. Wouldn’t take a lot of effort to use a script to tally the raw data. You could also simply ask the authors if they have a resource page somewhere that gives you this information (most of the numbers you’re asking for are already linked to or mentioned in the above article).

You are also asking a question that this paper never attempted to answer (catastrophic is also not a scientific term and is often a loaded term). Please note that the paper says the following about papers in category 1:

quantified (e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations

“percentage are meaningless. You can’t compare papers that state no position on global warming with those that do. It’s nonsensical as the papers that don’t state a position often are researching an entirely different ”

Collin Maessen is the founder and editor of Real Skeptic and a proponent of scientific skepticism. For his content he uses the most up to date and best research as possible. Where necessary consulting or collaborating with scientists.

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The goal of Real Skeptic is to take a critical look at scientific claims and investigate what the scientific literature and experts say about it. As skepticism doesn’t start with the viewpoints and claims of others, and being skeptical about those does not make you a skeptic. Being a skeptic starts with examining your own viewpoints, the positions you hold, and the claims you make.